For household robots ever to be practical, they’ll need to be able to recognize the objects they’re supposed to manipulate. But while object recognition is one of the most widely studied topics in artificial intelligence, even the best object detectors still fail much of the time. Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence [...]

Soon, the growing capability of your smartphone could be harnessed to detect cosmic rays in much the same way as high-end, multimillion-dollar observatories. With a simple app addition, Android phones, and likely other smartphone brands in the not-too-distant future, can be turned into detectors to capture the light particles created when cosmic rays crash [...]

Collaborative three-dimensional sketching is now possible thanks to a system known as Hyve-3D that University of Montreal researchers are presenting today at the SIGGRAPH 2014 conference in Vancouver. “Hyve-3D is a new interface for 3D content creation via embodied and collaborative 3D sketching,” explained lead researcher Professor Tomás Dorta, of the university’s School of Design. [...]

A new kind of human-machine communication is to make it possible to detect damage to rail vehicles before it’s too late and service trains only when they need it — all thanks to a cloud-supported, wireless network of sensors. A train running on damaged wheels could easily be heading for serious trouble. This is [...]

A new laser developed by a research group at Caltech holds the potential to increase by orders of magnitude the rate of data transmission in the optical-fiber network — the backbone of the Internet. The study was published the week of February 10-14 in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy [...]

Researchers have managed to distinguish between different varieties of beer using an electronic tongue. The discovery, published in the journal Food Chemistry, is accurate in almost 82% of cases. Beer is the oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic drink in the world. Now, scientists at the Autonomous University of Barcelona have led a study [...]

Gimball bumps into and ricochets off of obstacles, rather than avoiding them. This 34 centimeter in diameter spherical flying robot buzzes around the most unpredictable, chaotic environments, without the need for fragile detection sensors. This resiliency to injury, inspired by insects, is what sets it apart from other flying robots. Gimball is protected by a [...]

Cost and time savings will be made with the development of a new algorithm that is more robust and efficient at detecting faults in industrial machines. Academics from the Lincoln School of Engineering have devised a streamlined new process which can detect faults in industrial machines. Dr Jun Chen, Michael Gallimore, Professor Chris Bingham [...]

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed software that allows them to map unknown environments — such as collapsed buildings — based on the movement of a swarm of insect cyborgs, or “biobots.” “We focused on how to map areas where you have little or no precise information on where each biobot is, [...]

If a pair of long pants is too long, it is cut to length. A board that does not fit into a bookcase is sawed to the right length. People often customize the size and shape of materials like textiles and wood without turning to specialists like tailors or carpenters. In the future this should [...]